New Neighborhood Nicknames Are Sticking — FAST!

Neighborhoods in New York named BoCoCa, GoCaGa, and BoHo (and not after bohemian fashion)? Hoo-Ray! Most of us have already heard of SoHo, which is short for South of Houston Street, and Tribeca, short for the Triangle Below Canal Street. Real estate brokers and hippies who find the old-fashioned neighborhoods of New York to be, well, dated, are cozying up to even newer city handles. Now from BoHo (the Bowery below Houston Street) to NoHo (North of Houston Street), the Big Apple is being carved into new-age sounding names.

Mapmakers have already used DUMBO for the apartment-charged area under the Manhattan Bridge. Others are BoCoCa, an admixture of three Brooklyn neighborhoods: Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill, and GoCaGa for Gowanus and Carroll Garden.

Most people feel that the real estate industry is responsible for the rebranding of these neighborhoods. “These names are great selling points for agents trying to bring clients into a neighborhood that wasn’t so hip before, but sounds a lot hipper now,” said Jean Charles, a senior agent at Bond New York, a major sales and rental firm.

Others believe that it was also a way for residents of these areas to claim familiarity with these neighborhoods, coining new nicknames. “It was and still is a way of distinguishing between insiders and outsiders,” said Kathleen Hulser, a public historian of the New-York Historical Society in the Museums and Institutions industry. “We look at what the local residents and denizens call it, whether the city recognizes it and what the historical record says,” said Marc Jennings, president of Hagstrom.